Having lost all track of time during his brunch with Jeff, Emory was twenty minutes late when he pulled into the parking lot at the Regional Forensic Center. Spotting Wayne returning to his car, he pulled up beside him and lowered his passenger-side window. “Sorry I’m late.”
Wayne dropped his car keys into his pocket. “You didn’t miss much. As best the ME can tell, burning is the cause of death. Unfortunately, it wasn’t done postmortem. The lab verified that the powder we found on the ice is calcium carbide and the likely cause of the fire, and they were able to peel Britt’s cell phone from her clothes. They’re working on retrieving info from it, but between the fire and the water, I doubt we’ll get anything. Someone must’ve really hated her to murder her like that.”
“Or maybe it was just a convenient way to kill her and not be at the scene of the crime when it happened. Do you have the copy of Victor’s document I gave you?”
“Somewhere.” Wayne opened the door to rest his battered briefcase on the passenger seat. He rifled through the disordered stack of papers held within and pulled out the coffee-stained document. “Here it is.”
“He included information on Britt’s best friend in there somewhere.”
Wayne pointed to the paper. “Her name is Tatiana Burrett. Tatiana. Isn’t that a fairy or something in a Shakespeare book?”
Emory raised his eyebrows, more in admiration than derision. “Titania.”
“Don’t look at me like that. I had mandatory reading when I was in school too, Mr. Know-It-All.”
“I say we go talk to her and find out who Britt really was.”
“Sounds like a plan. She’s probably in school right now.”
Emory waved him inside. “I’ll drive.”
“Didn’t your dad want you to spend the night?”
“I’m not doing that,” Emory snapped, offering no elaboration.
Wayne slipped into the passenger seat, moving the briefcase to his lap. “Okay. If you want to disappoint your dad.”
Emory started to drive again. “I also think we should talk to the coach today.”
Wayne sneered at him. “Does that mean we’re splitting up again?”
“We can go together to both.”
“I feel so honored. It’ll be better this way. You’re no good with kids.”
“Why do you say that?”
“How many kids do you have?”
Emory pulled out of the parking lot, wondering, Why does everyone keep asking me that?
Emory and Wayne followed a petite, fiftyish woman down a crowded high school hallway. The slamming locker doors, cliquey chatter and squeak of shoes on over-waxed hardwood floors took Emory back to his own tortured days roaming these halls – a memory he now tried to shudder from his mind.
“She should be finished with photography class and is probably at her locker now,” the woman said before coming to a stop. She pointed to a curly-haired teenage girl with soft features, wearing a brown sweater and faded jeans. “There she is.”
Emory nodded to the woman. “Thank you, Principal…” He couldn’t remember her last name, but it didn’t matter since she was already making her way back to her office.
Wayne and Emory approached the girl as she hung a large camera in her locker and closed the door. Wayne spoke up first. “Tatiana?”
The girl jumped and turned around. “Yes?”
Wayne flashed his badge and introduced them both to her. “We want to talk to you about Britt Algarotti.”
A tear rolled down her pale freckled face. “Okay.”
“How close were you and Britt?” Wayne asked.
“Very. We’ve been best friends since kindergarten.”
“Tatiana, did you—” Emory began before she interrupted.
“You can call me Tati.”
“Tati, do you know anyone who would want to hurt Britt?”
“No.” Tati waved her arm at the students in view. “I mean, not enough to hurt her like that. Britt was our town’s biggest celebrity.”
“Because of her skating?” asked Emory.
Tati nodded. “And she’s from the richest family. A lot of the students here have parents who work at the water factory. Everyone wanted to be her friend, but Britt was very selective about who she’d let in. She knew people would just cozy up to her because of, well, who she was. Britt could see through that, most of the time.”
Emory watched the students who walked past them, most displaying suspicious glances toward the two strangers talking to Tati. “I would think a lot of the ones who didn’t make the cut would be jealous of her, maybe even hate her.”
Tati shook her head. “No. I mean, jealous yeah, but hate her?”
Wayne asked, “Was anything going on between Britt and her coach?”
“Going on?” Tati’s eyes shrunk from wide to squinty. “Eww, gross. He’s an old man.”
Wayne’s face snarled at the remark. “Are you sure you would know?”
“Yes. Dan Claymon is her boyfriend.”
Emory acted as if he hadn’t already been told about the boyfriend by Virginia, but in his head, he was high-fiving Tati for giving them this piece of information in a legal manner instead – since the first time was through the dubious hacking of Britt’s laptop by the PIs.
“I mean he was. They broke up about a week ago.”
“Did her dad know that she had a boyfriend?” asked Emory.
Tati looked at him as if the answer were obvious. “Yeah. Britt wasn’t one to sneak around. She couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.”
Wayne asked, “You know where we can find Dan?”
Tati pointed to a young man walking away from them down a perpendicular hallway. “He’s right there.”
“Hey Dan!” Wayne yelled out, prompting at least half the students in the hall to turn his way.
Dan Claymon looked at the two men walking toward him and took off running.